Posted by Martin Orr on
Friday, 05 May 2006 at 17:21
I have become warden of the College Chapel for Thursday evensongs. This means ensuring there are readers (a rota is produced by the Chapel Secretary, but I have to sort it out if someone can't do it), lighting the candles, giving out orders of service, closing the doors at the start of the service and opening them at the end, and counting the people in the congregation - this has to be recorded in a register of services (is this some sort of peculiar Anglican custom, or does it happen in the Presbyterian church as well?) Last night it added up to 64 people (counting 28 in the choir) which is far more than I thought there would be!
Yesterday we had elections to Cambridge City Council. These work in a somewhat bizarre fashion, with one third of the council elected each year and a break every fourth year. The reason this is so silly is that people get to vote the same way every time, so each ward has three councillors from the same party; whereas if all three were elected at once, a candidate from a second party could be elected if more than a third of people voted for them. Secondly, I did not have to prove my identity to vote; even the polling card which I received in the post said I did not have to bring it. Elections in Northern Ireland are clearly much better organised.
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Martin
Tags
chapel, elections, trinity
Posted by Martin Orr on
Sunday, 05 February 2006 at 12:55
Well this week I had (as I think I mentioned previously) a busy Wednesday afternoon, with three supervisions, and a busy few days before that doing the work for them. David, one of the chaplains, asked me to do the prayers of intercession in the College Chapel for Candlemas on Thursday. (Candlemas is the festival of the presentation of Christ in the Temple, and involved more candles.) That meant both writing the prayers and reading them. We had a brief lesson on how to write them last Sunday. I was very nervous but it went well.
Last Sunday I went to the United Reform Church (what the Presbyterian Church in England merged to become). It was fairly similar to a progressive Presbyterian service at home; one interesting thing they did was to compose a "psalm" during the service by different people in the congregation suggesting a line of praise. There was also a fire drill following the benediction; I'm told that neither of these things happen every week.
This morning I went to a Lutheran Church. This surprised me because the liturgy were almost identical to a Catholic Mass, starting with Kyrie, Gloria, etc, and some people crossed themselves at each mention of the Trinity. However it was a very Protestant sermon, focussed tightly on the text and enthusiastically preached, and of course all the Catholic theology of the Eucharist was dropped. Also they replaced "holy catholic church" with "holy Christian church" in the creed.
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Martin
Tags
cambridge, chapel, emmanuel, lutheran, trinity
Posted by Martin Orr on
Monday, 28 November 2005 at 08:46
Yesterday I was stewarding at the College Advent service, the biggest service of the year. This meant welcoming people and directing them to seats; but also being in charge of fire safety. In fact in the event of a fire I was responsible for getting people through the main doors from the Chapel into the ante-Chapel; this is a major job as there were 500 people in the Chapel and only one other fire exit (and that exit is newly added). Fire is in fact a significant risk at this service because it is all candle-lit. Fortunately that part of my duties was not required.
The last few days of this week were very busy as I had one examples sheet due in on Thursday and another on Friday, as well as a German class and supervision on Friday. I now have just two more questions left to do on my last examples sheet for this term, and two more supervisions. Plus a German listening test on Friday, the day before I come home. In terms of going to all courses' lectures, there are three left: Law, Oriental Studies and History of Art. There are also three more days of lectures. History of Art in particular is difficult as there is only one first year in the college doing it and I don't know who they are. So I may or may not get that completed.
For those in Focus, see you on Sunday,
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Martin
Tags
cambridge, chapel, languages, lectures, trinity
Posted by Martin Orr on
Monday, 17 October 2005 at 19:34
Things have begun to become more settled this week: lectures in the mornings, working and relaxing in the afternoons. I have signed up for a German course on Friday afternoons, and I am going to the college Amnesty International group. Each Tuesday they have a meeting to write letters to governments about specific people around the world who are in danger of being tortured, executed, or unjustly imprisoned.
I am also going to an ecumenical discussion group on Thursday evenings, who have a speaker from a different church each week. This week it was the Orthodox Church, which was something I didn't know much about and was very interesting. On Sunday I went to the College Chapel. This is an Anglican chapel, but the service is (apart from changing the order of some parts) almost identical to the Catholic Mass.
Last Tuesday I had my first supervision, on differential equations. This was great and I think I learned a lot from it. I have another tomorrow, on algebra and geometry. I have also set out to go to a lecture from every subject - this week I went to Physiology of Organisms from Natural Sciences and Spanish Linguistics from Modern and Medieval Languages.
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Martin
Tags
cambridge, chapel, churches, languages, lectures, supervisions